Nobel Peace Prize to Gore

Top honors keep rolling in for the Emmy and Oscar-winning
former Veep, who returned to his environmental roots
following 2000's contentious battle for the White House

Al Gore, pictured above at the 2007 Primetime Emmy Awards, which honored his Current TV network with an Interactive Television Emmy.

Photo Credit: Mathew Imaging

Oslo, Norway — Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to publicize and heighten understanding of human-caused global warming.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee this morning announced that Gore and the United Nations’ climate panel will equally share the award for “their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

Gore and the IPCC were selected from a list of 181 candidates to split the prize, worth approximately $1.56 million.

The award committee, based in Oslo, Norway, said their decision was intended to bring into sharper focus the actions “necessary to protect the world’s future climate and thereby to reduce the threat to the security of mankind.”

In its citation the committee described Gore as “probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted.”

Co-recipient IPCC, based in Geneva, Switzerland, is a network of more than 2,000 scientists in more than 130 countries organized in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program. The group has produced two decades of scientific reports that have “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming,” the citation said.

In a statement, Gore said he was deeply honored and planned to donate his half of the award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit of which he is board chairman.

“We face a true planetary emergency,” Gore said in his statement. “The climate crisis is not a political issue; it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.”

Gore served two terms as Vice President under President Bill Clinton. Since leaving office in 2001, he has lectured around the world about the perils of global warming. Last year his presentation was captured in a film on the subject, An Inconvenient Truth, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Gore, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, received the Nobel news in San Francisco, where he spoke Thursday night at a fundraiser for California Senator Barbara Boxer.

Gore and his wife, Tipper, keep an apartment in San Francisco, where their daughter Kristin lives. The city is also headquarters of Current TV, the television and online network he co-founded with businessman Joel Hyatt. Last month Current, which makes frequent use of viewer-generated content, was honored for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Television at the 59th Primetime Emmy Awards.

Gore’s Nobel recognition renewed speculation about a potential run for the U.S. presidency. Although numerous supporters have sought to persuade him to join the 2008 race, Gore, who lost the 2000 election to George W. Bush, has said repeatedly that he is not interested in running.

Nobel prizes have been awarded since 1901, based on the will of Swedish chemist, engineer and dynamite-inventor Alfred Nobel. All are awarded in Sweden with the exception of the peace prize, which for unknown reasons Nobel instructed be determined by a Norwegian committee.

The awards are officially presented each year on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.